Jarret Ideas on “The Chase”
A couple “Chase” drivers may embrace this idea purposed by Dale Jarret after their less than steller finishes at Kansas City this past weekend. One of the problems I noted from the inception of NASCAR’s “playoff” system is how severe a penalty a driver would suffer by a poor finish in one of the 10 Chase races. If a driver finishes in thirty third with five races remaining due to a blown engine if would effectively drop him from contention for the cup. Jarret has what may be a better idea.
The veteran driver, who won the Winston Cup in 1999, isn’t among the 10 drivers contending for this year’s title. But Jarrett said Saturday that those drivers’ finishes should be scored differently.“Say that Jeff Gordon finished fifth and was the first of those 10 drivers,” Jarrett said. “He would get the 180 points for being the highest finisher of those, and then the next guy might be Elliott, who might finish 10th, but he would be the second-highest and he would get 170. Then it would just drop down from there, regardless of where their finish was.”
Complicated? Yes, but Jarrett figures his format would keep one bad race from dropping a driver from title contention.
“The most anybody could lose would be somewhere between 50 and 55 points,” he said, “so you’re going to keep everybody closer for the extended period of time.”
Sounds reasonable to me. In effect a driver would have one “throw away” race where the cost of a poor finish wouldn’t drop him 150 or more points, plus any points he entered the weekend behind the leader. As it stands now this years Chase is basiclly down to the top three in points due to the gap between fourth place and the leader with only six events left on the schedule.
UPDATE: Monty Dutton of the Gaston Gazette notes an unintended consequence of the current Chase format. With most of the press centering their NASCAR coverage on the ten chase participants those on the outside are concerned about their sponsors, here is the money quote.
All the exposure granted the new championship format has left those not fortunate enough to be in it feeling more than a little overlooked. They
